Are you involved with Web design in any way?

If so, answer me this: why do people surf the Web? It isn’t just to see yet another set of bevelled glowing rollover buttons - it is (almost always) the same reason you read magazines, newspapers and books: to find information. And virtually all that information is provided as words.

Good information design revolves around excellence in typographic layout and control. Get it right, and everything falls into place; the layout becomes a seamless composite greater and more effective than the sum of its parts. Get it wrong or just ignore the issue entirely, and your pages will be less effective at best and are likely to be a practical failure. So, if this is so clear-cut, why is most typography on the Web so overwhelmingly bad?